Paper and Ink

The most common residence found in Gogpodda is a simple tent on a raft of driftwood or a flat-bottomed rowboat. These allow for easy crossing of the morasses outer banks to an interior area where they can remain within the flow. The older buildings were generally built upon carcasses found secured within the morass. Paper and Ink is built in a tree.

This is not a tree whose seed was brought by a bird and slowly grew in the morass. This tree started out as a feather. The blue-green haired wizard had brought it intending to use it to set up his new home in the colony. A tree feather token that causes a great oak to spring into being with a 5-foot-diameter trunk, 60-foot height, and 40-foot top diameter. The tree is living and grows as any normal oak tree would.

The wizard, named Malcus, has a blue-ringed octopus as a familiar. Twice a day, with the familiars’ permission, Malcus harvests a cloud of ink from the octopus’ aquarium ball. Every full moon Malcus provides the ink used for the voting. He also takes the leaves once the process is complete and spends a day trying to salvage as much ink from them as he can before he uses them to create paper.

Malcus makes paper mostly from leaves of seaweed. In the fall, when the leaves of the oak tree turn colors, he uses them as well to make paper. He will not harvest the leaves off his tree until they begin to die naturally, as he does not want to hurt the tree.

That is also why he does not allow limbs to be cut from the tree. The last person who tried, who had not been a gnome according to Malcus, was put down with a lightning bolt. That was a little over thirty years ago. Malcus did not activate his feather token until after those who wanted to leave Gogpodda from the first shipwrecked crew had done so.

Not to say that Malcus did not build in or manipulate the tree. Using a wand of wood shape Malcus began constructing his crude home. He transformed branches into roofs, walls, and floors as well as permanent furnishings.